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Space photos of the day: Pollution

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This NASA Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite image of the Gulf of Mexico obtained on May 28, 2010 shows the extent of the oil released from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The oil can be seen as a sheen on the water surface. It is especially evident when the angle of the sun's light that is reflected off of the ocean surface is equal to the viewing angle of the satellite - called sunglint.AFP/NOAA/NASA/Getty Images/Newscom

On November 25, 2002, the MODIS on the Aqua satellite captured this true-color image of fires (red outlines) burning in California. At upper right is Lake Tahoe, on the California-Nevada border. At lower left is San Francisco. Plumes of smoke stream westward from the fires, which are burning in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Other fires are scattered across the state, and in the full scene, what could be a mixture of smoke and urban air pollution is nestled into the San Joaquin Valley.Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Rapid Response Team/NASA/GSFC

Researchers have discovered that smoke and smog move in different ways through the atmosphere. A series of unusual events several years ago created a blanket of pollution over the Indian Ocean. In this animation, significant smog or tropospheric ozone is represented by red and green and regions of significant smoke index are in shades of white and gray.NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

Haze was pooled along the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains over the Ganges and Brahmaputra Rivers on Jan. 17, 2006, when the MODIS on NASA’s Terra satellite passed overhead and captured this image. To the north, skies over the Tibetan Plateau were crystal clear, revealing the winter-bare landscape, as well as clear and ice-covered lakes. Rapid urbanization, industrialization, and explosive population growth have caused India’s air quality to deteriorate.Jesse Allen/MODIS Rapid Response team/NASA

The fires that raged across southern Africa in August and September of 2000 produced a thick 'river of smoke' that observers compared with the aftermath of the Kuwaiti oil fires in 1991.NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

The Gulf of Finland is featured in this image photographed by an Expedition 11 crew member on the International Space Station. This strongly oblique view shows the Gulf of Finland and Lake Ladoga in the sunglint of late afternoon. The image was taken from the station when the position of the craft lay north of the Caspian Sea, approximately 2,500 kilometers to the southeast on the Russia/Kazakhstan border.NASA

Middle school students across the country photographed the fires and smoke over southern Sumatra from a camera aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. Originally set to clear land for agriculture, the fires are usually extinguished by the annual monsoon rains. However, in this case, the rains had not come due to El Nino which produces dry conditions in the Indonesia region.NASA/JPL-Caltech

Thick haze blew across the Yellow Sea and the Korean Peninsula toward Japan. The haze appears particularly thick in southeastern China and western Japan. China's air pollution problems are function of its rapidly developing economy. With an energy infrastructure dominated by coal-burning power plants and a dramatic increase in private vehicle ownership over the past decade, the country has experienced a deterioration in air quality, a problem which spills over national boundaries. Jeff Schmaltz/NASA/MODIS/Goddard Space Flight Center/Sipa Press/Newscom

This graphic shows the data from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Earth Probe, for the month of September 2000. Areas of depleted ozone over the Antarctic are shown in blue. The area is three times larger than the entire land mass of the United States and is the largest such area ever observed.UPI Photo/NASA/Newscom

Central Turkey dominates this north-looking panorama, with the long fingered island of Cyprus (lower l.) surrounded by the deep blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Air pollution from East European industry flows down into the Black Sea basin, especially at the west end (haze top l.) as shown in this view (compare clearer air top r.).NASA

In northern Italy, smog collected at the base of the Alps in late December 2005. In this image, the smog appears as a transparent layer of gray, just south of the snow-covered Alps. Clouds overhead partially block the view of the snow-capped mountains and parts of Italy to the south.NASA/MODIS

This NASA true-color Terra MODIS image obtained in 2002 shows great swirls of pollution covering the northeastern United States and parts of Canada. While clouds in this image appear solidly white, the pollution is a murky, semi-transparent bluish gray. AFP/NASA/Newscom

This photograph, acquired in February 1984 by an astronaut aboard the space shuttle, shows a series of mature thunderstorms located near the Parana River in southern Brazil. With abundant warm temperatures and moisture-laden air in this part of Brazil, large thunderstorms are commonplace. Yale professor Steven Sherwood found that ice crystals are smaller in clouds over continents than oceans, which could be attributed to the amount of pollution generated over land.NASA

Smoke are seen plumes above Baghdad Iraq during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, which originate along major roads and canals, believed to be burning pools of oil from pipelines. World History Archive/Newscom

In east-central China, the broad coastal plain through which the Yellow River drains out to Bo Hai is surrounded in an arc by a landscape of ridges and valleys. In this MODIS image from the sensor on the Aqua satellite on November 17, 2004, the coastal plain takes up most of the scene. Grayish haze spreads across the coastal plain, and it fills valleys in the west, highlighting the topography.NASA/MODIS/NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center

These NASA image shows the most complete view ever of the world's air pollution travelling through the atmosphere, across continents and oceans. The false colors in these images represent levels of carbon monoxide in the lower atmosphere, ranging from about 390 parts per billion (dark brown pixels), to 220 parts per billion (red pixels), to 50 parts per billion (blue pixels).NASA/AFP/Newscom

This 24 April 2001 NASA image shows a vast cloud of dust (Yellowish Wisps) that originated in China and blew out across the Pacific Ocean to the US where the dust became a significant pollution problem. The early April dust cloud started as a sand storm sweeping across the Taklimakan Desert in western China and then across the Gobi Desert in eastern Mongolia.AFP PHOTO/NASA/GFSC/ORBIMAGE

Smoke from the burning oil fields to the north and south of Kuwait City, seen on the south shore of Kuwait Bay almost totally obscures the view of the tiny, but oil rich, nation of Kuwait. During the brief war between Iraq and the Allied forces, many of the oil wells in Kuwait were destroyed and set afire. For several months, those fires burned out of control, spewing wind borne smoke and ash for hundreds of miles. NASA

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Three startup companies led by prominent scientists are working on new technologies to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The scientific community is skeptical, but these entrepreneurs believe removing CO2 can eventually be profitable and help cool the planet.

With global greenhouse gas emissions still on the rise, despite decades of talk about curbing them, maybe the time has come to think differently about the climate crisis. Yes, we need to burn less coal, oil and natural gas, but clearly fossil fuels are going to be around for awhile. So why not try to clean up the mess they make?